


Simulacrum

by Crystalwren



Series: Simulacra [1]
Category: Hellsing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-27
Updated: 2006-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalwren/pseuds/Crystalwren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old men shouldn't fall in love with young women. TV series-verse, following Red Rose Vertigo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simulacrum

_Fantasy Number One: She stands by the window, with the heavy drapes opened and the sunlight comes flooding through to coat everything in honey. Her coat is hanging from the back of her chair and the exquisitely tailored silk of her blouse slips across her breasts. She raises her head as he enters, looks at him and smiles. She says, “you know,” and stops to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “You know,” she says again, “it’s a beautiful day outside. I was thinking that perhaps we could have some tables set in the gardens and work out there. How does that sound, Walter?”_

  
Blood. So much blood.

Blood on the knife, blood on the floor. Blood on his hands as he desperately tried to staunch the flow. The wound made peculiar sucking noises as the knife moved backwards and forwards within it. He couldn’t stop the movement because it rose and fell with every breath in her body. A comparatively little wound but deadly, oh so deadly. So much blood everywhere, soaking into his gloves, his trousers, his shirt, even his hair when he swiped at a stray lock that fell into his eyes. Integra’s own hair was changing from bright platinum into a dowdy, artificial red and somewhere along the line the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism kicked in and she began to struggle. Walter ended up straddling her waist, using the weight of his body to pin her down and he tried to keep the knife still and her head still and her shoulders still and everything was sticky and slippery and then Alucard was there helping to hold her down, Alucard looking into his eyes, Alucard grinning that psychotic grin that he always got when violence was in the offering and Alucard saying, “there is an easy way out of this situation, you know,” and Walter somehow found the split second needed to punch the smirking freak in the mouth.

The medical personal arrived, bringing with them bags and IVs and medical kits. Walter was forced to one side as they fixed tape and patches everywhere and injected Integra with something that made her stop struggling and relax. They loaded her onto a trolley and he was left there, kneeling in a sticky, cooling mess, smelling copper and iron while all he could see was red. He picked himself up, staggering backwards to collapse against her desk. Alucard took off his overcoat and the frockcoat beneath that. He drew his gloves off with his teeth and deliberately tossed it all aside. Then, as Walter and Victoria watched, the vampire threw himself into the puddle of blood and rolled in it like a dog in filth. The old man covered his mouth, smearing his face without realising it. His shoulders shook and Seras Victoria made a gagging sound and fled.

Walter went and had a shower, cruising, as they say, on autopilot, trying to act as though he’d merely come back from a particularly messy assignment. The water mixed with the blood in pink rivulets all over his skin and it occurred to him that he was covered in Integra, covered in her blood like they way he’d fantasised about being covered in her saliva and sweat and was horrified at his helpless erection. He pulled at his penis bitterly.

“You monster,” he hissed, the words lost in the sound of the water.

 _Fantasy Number Two: Walter will freely admit that he’s a leg man. Breasts and bottoms are all very nice, but what catches his immediate attention are always a woman’s legs._

 _He imagines Integra sitting on the edge of a bed rumpled with sleep and innuendo. Sometimes she wears an elegant chemise, sometimes a brassiere. Sometimes nothing at all. The only consistent things in this fantasy are the bed and the old-fashioned suspender belt around her waist._

 _Raising one leg in the air, she gathers up a cream stocking and sets it on the tips of her toes, begins to slide the material up. Over her foot, long and narrow, over the smooth coffee-cream flesh of her perfect calf. Over her knee. She stands to pull the stocking up her thigh, to affix it to her suspender belt. Her legs are taunt and curved, sleek as satin and her hips are rounded and plump and delightful, nothing like the too-thin creatures that are the fashion now days. Integra bends to adjust the material, straighten a twist and her hair falls forward and covers her face. She flicks it away and sighs as she sits down and picks up the other stocking. She raises her naked other leg and does it all again._

  
After his shower, Walter made Integra’s afternoon tea. He did not look at the little plastic tent that the good Doctor Trevallyn had erected on the tiles of the foyer. He did not go and watch the operation, like Alucard did with such ferocious concentration. Instead he counted out dainty biscuits onto even daintier plates and set the timer for the tea to steep, fingered the porcelain with tender fingers. This set had come with Integra’s mother into the house, an English pattern of no particular value or originality besides nostalgia. Here a chip in the rim; in the inside of the cup, a series of delicate cracks in the glaze that he eyed thoughtfully. On the ground floor of the mansion was a cave of a kitchen and a veritable army of cooks, cleaners and groundsmen but Walter took great pride in personally keeping the three tea sets that were Integra’s favourites in excellent condition. It is in these small rituals that intimacy lays. There was a constant stream of people in the corridor outside, dashing backwards and forwards with hushed whispers: _what’s happening? What’s happening?_ Too disciplined for outright panic but skirting the edges of it nevertheless.

Integra, of course, did not want her afternoon tea. She was doped up to her eyeballs and out stone cold. Trevallyn came to see him and eyed the tray. “Was this absolutely necessary?”

“Would you prefer me to run around like a headless chicken like everyone else?” asked Walter mildly as he stacked the plates and put the biscuits back into tins.

“As it pleases you,” said the good doctor indifferently. He rubbed his hands together briskly. “Right. Sir Integra’s condition is stable. The most dangerous wound was the one in her neck. She managed to avoid piercing either her esophageus or her jugular, which, frankly, is the reason she’s still alive right now. As for the one in her stomach-”

“She has a wound in her stomach?” Walter interrupted.

“You didn’t notice? Well, it’s no surprise given that she was bleeding from her neck like a stuck pig.”

“I sat on her stomach. To hold her down.”

“You didn’t do her any damage besides bruising, if that’s what’s worrying you. It’s deep but not wide and the blade slid rather neatly between her internal organs without so much as nicking any of them. Beyond infection there’ll be no trouble with it. We’ve replaced nearly a third of her blood. Any more than that there would be possible brain damage.” Walter emptied the teapot down the sink. “The woman has the devil’s own luck, I’d swear to it. The wound in her neck, the wound in her stomach, a millimetre to either side and she’d have died. “Blood loss alone…” Trevallyn trailed off, shaking his head.

“Is there any sign of…contamination?”

“Initial examination shows no sign of vampiric traits,” said the doctor bluntly and Walter closed his eyes and sighed. “Understand, her condition is stable and there doesn’t appear to be any damage to her brain or her kidneys but it’s infection we have to worry about now.”

“I see,” Walter nodded. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Trevallyn waved that aside. “She’s not out of the woods yet. And I’ve no doubt that we’re all going to have our work cut out convincing her to rest and an even bigger job keeping that overgrown cattle tick off of her.”

“I can handle Alucard.”

“Oh, really?” drawled Trevallyn, “the best of luck to you then, Mr Dornez.” He turned to go. “She’s going to be out for another twenty to twenty five hours. “I doubt she’ll be wanting afternoon tea for a while,” and he sauntered out without so much as a farewell.

Walter worked as late as he could but he was quickly forced to admit his tiredness and desperate need for another shower. There was no rest for the weary as he discovered when he walked into his room to find Alucard stretched out on his bed, the vampire’s boots on Walter’s immaculate quilt.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” drawled Alucard, picking his fangs with his fingernails. “This mattress is too hard.”

“You don’t sleep in beds,” snapped Walter.

“True, but I can still appreciate a decent one,” he rolled over on his side to watch Walter undress. “You’re in magnificent shape, you know. You could easily be thirty or forty years younger.” Walter tossed his vest in the laundry basket. It was quickly followed by tie and gloves. He started unbuttoning his shirt. “So, tell me…can you still get it up?” The old man bundled up his shirt and threw it at Alucard in disgust. The vampire caught it neatly, sniffing at it before he began to chew on the collar.

“Lord Alucard, please don’t eat my clothing.”

“Oh, don’t whine. You have forty identical ones anyway.” Flash of canine teeth. “I know. I looked.”

Walter snorted and made a grab for his shirt. The vampire grinned and clamped his jaws shut. Sound of tearing cloth and Walter ended up with half of a shirt. He shook his head in resignation and threw the ruined fabric in the bin.

“Lord Alucard, if you please, I am very tired.”

“Does Master know,” drawled Alucard, sucking on a shred of fabric, “about the nightgown you keep buried underneath your socks? The red satin one that you take out and run through your fingers as you dream about touching her?”

Walter turned white. “How dare you!”

“You can’t call me a lair, Angel of Death.” His expression changed. “She’s being moved,” he said, and he got up and walked straight through the wall, leaving Walter standing in the centre of his room, shirtless and shaking, his wires glittering between his fingers.

 _Fantasy Number Three: Satin. Ah, yes, smooth and shining satin. Any colour is nice but red is by far the best. Walter had been something of a movie buff as he was growing up and his adolescent dreams were dominated by tragic goddesses in elegant suffering. When the age of these polished women was finally over, replaced by crude method actors and foul-mouthed pretenders, Walter was left with the memory of their gowns and blouses and scarves._

 _Buried beneath a veritable mountain of identical black socks is a cardboard box. Within that box is a nightgown of rich, red satin, cut high in front, low in the back._

 _Walter sits on the edge of his bed, the box lying across his knees. He smiles, takes off the lid, holds the box out in offering. Integra smiles back. She takes the gown out and holds it against her chest, the colour violent against the soft grey of her suit. Into the bathroom she goes and Walter rubs his hands together and waits. He hears the soft swish of the nightgown and looks up._

 _“It fits perfectly,” she says, and she is the embodiment of every woman he’s ever dreamt about, every woman he’s ever desired._

  
Walter dressed hurriedly in a new shirt and shrugged a jacket over the top, not bothering with a vest or tie. He sprinted down into the foyer just as the nurses were wheeling the hospital bed into a hastily emptied office. “Best not to move her too far,” said the Matron curtly. Hovering in the doorway, he watched as the women in white hooked Integra up to a hundred different machines.

“What are these?”

“Heart monitor,” said the Matron, pointing. “Brainwave monitor, blood pressure monitor, the machine that goes ‘ping’, ventilator.” Without pausing she opened the front of Integra’s hospital gown and Walter shrieked and turned his back. The Matron covered the unconscious woman’s chest with sticky little tabs. “These are some very sensitive pieces of equipment. If the dissolved oxygen in her blood changes by so much as point two of a percent we’ll know about it.”

Their tasks done, the nurses trooped out, leaving the Matron to close the curtains around Integra’s bed. “It’s best that you don’t come too close. Give the wounds time to settle,” she said, not unkindly. “You can come and see her in ten or so hours. Sleep if you can. You’ll be the first to know if anything changes.”

Walter thanked the Matron and left. He might have been sentimental by nature but he was also practical as well and he knew that standing guard outside her door would achieve absolutely nothing. He gave the watch their orders with a mask set over his churning heart. Burned into his brain was the glimpse of the chocolate tips of Integra’s breasts he’d gotten when the Matron had opened her surgical gown.

  
 _Fantasy Number Four: Kisses. Swift affectionate pecks. Lingering brushes of lips. Long, slow, tonguing kisses that last for hours._

 _What a kiss with Integra would be like, Walter honestly doesn’t know. He wonders of course, but all the years he’s been her faithful steward have only served to convince him that he doesn’t know her at all. Sometimes he thinks that she’ll respond with a slow, burning fire. Sometimes he thinks she’ll use that cunning tongue of hers to excellent effect. Most of the time he thinks that any approach will meet with cold, implacable resistance, her mouth resolutely shut, her eyes flat with rage._

 _First kiss._

 _The gentlest pressure of his mouth against hers, he waits, waits until she sighs and parts her lips, soft and slick under his tender, loving kiss. It goes on forever, strengthening by infinitesimal degrees. He ventures his tongue against the barrier of her teeth and is rewarded by the sensation of rough velvet, the tip of her tongue against his. One of them makes a noise, he’s not sure whom and he draws apart so that he can look at her._

 _She’s smiling._

  
The alarm clock shrilled and Walter’s immediate thought was that today was Sunday and that he needed to get up and drag Integra, who had a true night person’s abject hatred of early mornings, out of her bed and into the nearest Anglican church. Then he remembered and looked again at the clock. She had another five hours of induced unconsciousness at least.

Stretching produced a series of pops in his joints and a searing pain across his shoulders, where stress had caused the muscles there to tie themselves into knots. He dressed swiftly and headed straight for the makeshift infirmary. Two soldiers stood to attention on either side of Integra’s bed and he glared at them until the milksops finally got the idea and slunk out. The nurse on duty fixed her gaze firmly above Walter’s head but otherwise refused to quail. He gave up.

“Would you please give me a few minutes alone with Sir Integra, please?

“She’s still unconscious, Mr Dornez.”

“I’m aware of that,” he said frostily.

“Five minutes,” she said, and stalked off like she had a broom handle shoved up her arse.

The soft beep of the heart machine filled the room. They’d already taken Integra off the ventilator. Her hair had been bundled into a surgical cap and a few lank and greasy strands had escaped to cling to her forehead. He took off his glove and tenderly stroked her cheek, running the warm metal of his rings across her mouth. She didn’t stir.

“I have thought about telling you,” he said, sitting in the chair the nurse had vacated. He pitched his voice so low that a person standing right next to him wouldn’t have heard a whisper. “But really, what purpose would it serve? I can imagine your reaction. Horrified pity, perhaps. You’d thank me politely with eyes wide as you surreptitiously reach for your gun in case I try anything…impolite. Anger maybe, as you think of me in your room, the glimpses I’ve had of your lovely skin, your dirty undergarments. You’d see it as a form of violation. You’d probably be right.”

Taking her hand, he kissed her palm. “Old men,” he said bitterly, “shouldn’t fall in love with young women.” He waited, but the soft rise and fall of her chest did not change. Walter stood up. He whispered, “Alucard?” Nothing. Nothing at all.

“I failed to protect you, Sir Integra. Laura caught me daydreaming, you see. All the time I was choking whatever life remains out of Seras Victoria I was with you, in my head. With you. I was dreaming of you. I love you, Integra.”

Bending over, he took her shoulders and pressed his chest to hers in the closest thing to an embrace he could give her. He licked her jaw. Salt and grit rolled over his tongue, the ashy remains of Laura, his shame. “I love you.” He kissed her. She tasted sour and he felt the air move and knew that the blow was coming and didn’t try to dodge it.

Light exploded behind his eyelids and he staggered backwards, one step, another. “So you _are_ here,” he hissed. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, produced a handkerchief and spat blood. “Fine. Fine. I won’t kiss her again. I won’t kiss your precious Master,” and he pressed the cloth to his mouth and laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.

“Sir? Mr Dornez? I’m very sorry, but that’s five minutes.” The voice of the nurse, officiousness mixed with pity. She thought, Walter realised, that he was crying.

“Fine,” he said again, and left. He closed his mouth over his bloody teeth and went straight to the gymnasium. After changing into his practice clothes the very first thing was fall straight onto his face in front of everybody.

  
 _Fantasy Number Five: Walter thinks about dancing. He’d been thought an excellent dancer in his youth and he imagines himself in tuxedo and tails, and Integra again in scarlet satin. This time the gown is a ball gown, neckline plunging to show a delightful décolleté and the low-cut back falling into a full and gracious sweep of skirt._

 _The music changes according to his mood: swinging ragtime, sweetly wailing jazz, something nameless and slow and romantic. She twines her arms about his neck and he holds her by the hips. They dance and she throws her head back and Walter takes the opportunity to nibble his way up the column of her throat. They kiss, gently at first, but steadily stronger until they are clutching at one another and he is hard and ready against her belly._

  
Walter was there when Integra woke for the first time. The way she stared he wasn’t sure she recognised him, but she definitely recognised Trevallyn. When she ordered the good doctor to move her up to her own bedroom post haste, Walter had no doubt in his mind that she was going to be just fine.

Alucard was lounging on Walter’s bed again. He grinned as the old man walked in, holding the red nightgown up so that he could see it.

“It really is very pretty. I can see why you like it.” Walter turned white with rage. “Oh, come on, Angel of Death. One indulgence for another. I let you hold my precious Master; you let me hold your precious fetish. If you ask me you’re rather getting the better deal of the two.”

“Go to hell.”

“Been there,” replied Alucard, getting up to follow Walter into the bathroom. There was an ocean of malice in his voice as he said, “she’s not the pure, unsullied virgin you think she is.”

“What nonsense are you babbling now?”

“Integra. She’s not a virgin. When she was sixteen, two visiting Swiss soldiers took her into a supply shed after lights out in the barracks.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” whispered Walter, staring at his haggard face in the mirror above the basin.

“She took off her blouse and her skirt and her underwear.”

“Please don’t. Please don’t tell me.”

“They fucked her, one after the other. In a strange way, it’s a source of power for her. She sits at the Round Table Conference and she knows that the old men think her a frigid bitch-queen who couldn’t melt butter between her legs. She knows they’re wrong. It gives her a sense of immense satisfaction.”

“I said that I don’t want to hear it!” roared Walter, punching his reflection. The mirror shattered with a satisfying crash and he lent on the basin, panting. “Why. Why did you tell me that?”

Silence. Alucard said, “I didn’t come here solely to aggravate you.”

“Really,” whispered Walter. He stripped off his gloves. There was a sliver of glass embedded in one knuckle, but otherwise he was unharmed under the leather. “I wish you would just…leave.”

“I can give you what you want.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Oh, but I can,” and the old man heard the swish of satin behind him and he shuddered at the tide of sickening knowledge that welled up inside of him.

“Turn around, Angel of Death.”

“No.”

“Turn around. Turn around, Walter,” and the vampire’s voice was softer, higher, and female. “I want you, Walter.”

With every fibre of his being screaming at him, Walter turned around. “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh God, God forgive me. Why are you doing this?” he slumped to the tiles, amongst the broken pieces of mirror.

Integra stood there, the nightgown of red satin clinging to every inch of her body. “I crave warm, fresh blood,” she said, “and you, you crave…me.” She put her foot, cold as the grave, in his lap and rubbed it over his helpless erection and he came clutching at her ankle. “I’ll never tell,” said Alucard/Integra. “Cross my heart.”

“Hope to die,” whispered Walter, pulling up her skirt so that he could press his mouth to the coldest part of all.

 _Fantasy Number Six: They stand together in his room, exchanging the softest of kisses. He is barefoot and in his shirtsleeves, gloveless and without his rings. She, of course, wears the red satin nightgown. They hold hands and he sighs with pleasure as she bites his jaw. He wants to touch her. She lets him._

 _Over and over he strokes his hands down her flanks, cups her buttocks, squeezes her thighs. Finally he builds up the courage to press his lips to her breasts. He knows that they’re uncommonly sensitive. He knows that because he’s watched her during the ground fighting classes that he made her take, watched her judo gii open to show the heavy sports bra strapping her up, down, and in, with the webbing and padding and under wire still not enough to stop the stinging pain from blows that make her wince and cross her arms over her chest. She’s sensitive so he’s gentle and her tender sighs tell him that he’s doing it right._

 _The weight of her breasts in his hands excites him almost to frenzy and he hitches up her skirt. She’s not wearing knickers and he can put his fingers straight into the hair and slick heat between her legs. Gasping loudly, she clutches at him and he watches, watches her face as she convulses around his hand and she is beautiful. Integra is beautiful as she comes and Walter sees it all._

 _It lasts for a long time. Finally she opens her eyes and his fingers slip out of her as she kisses him with satisfied satiety. Taking his elbow, she leads him to the bed and sits on the edge as he kneels before her. Graciously she parts her thighs and allows him to worship her._

  
The Integra that Walter slept with and the Integra of real life were two very different beasts. Dream Integra that visited him in his bed was beautiful and elegant, idealised and perfect. Real Integra had sallow, sickly skin and pain etched into her eyes and stubble on her calves and hair that had never seen a razor under her arms. The only thing that Integra from the dreaming had with reality was that the both of them smelled like an open, bloody wound.

Integra Hellsing, hitherto fiercely independent, could not bathe herself, dress herself or wash her own hair. There were nurses to help her do that, of both sexes and all ages and degrees of attractiveness but there were times when she simply could not abide being touched by a stranger and on those times it was Walter who guiltily washed her back, Walter who ran the brush through her hair, Walter who tied her shoelaces and her cravats and Walter who controlled the shaking in his hands only by inhuman effort and who violated her effigy every night in a hundred different ways.

It was Walter who first saw the thin, red streaks forming around the stitches in her neck; saw the first signs of forming pus.

“You’re late,” said Alucard/Integra when he finally turned in for the night, only to find the vampire stretched out on his bedroom floor, bare-naked and shameless as a twenty-pound whore.

“There’s an infection,” said the old man miserably.

“Not from me, there isn’t. You can’t get VD from a corpse.”

“Alucard.”

“I know, I know,” she said. She got up and twined her arms about his waist. “Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”

“Do you promise?” he asked, knowing he was being pathetic, but not able to help it.

“I promise.”

She drew him to the bed, hands moving all over his body. He kicked off his trousers and his shoes as she slid his shirt and vest over his shoulders. Naked as she save for his gloves, he let her push him into the mattress. Walter could achieve an erection with surprising ease considering his age, but they ever lasted very long.

Alucard/Integra straddled his waist. She took the blood she wanted and when the first flush of warmth touched her cheek, she guided him inside and he came silently, biting his lip.

A man is a strange creature. Walter laboured, day and night, under a vast burden of guilt. He felt guilty because he’d failed to protect the one he loved, the one he was not supposed to love at all. He felt guilty because after he’d spent the day in myriad of tasks required to keep Hellsing and its fragile Director on their feet, he went back to his room and had sex with the Director’s simulacrum. Having sex with the simulacrum showed without a doubt that Walter was a premature ejaculator and even though the bargain between the old man and the vampire was, on the surface, a simple sex-for-blood exchange, guilt at his performance in bed pushed Walter towards extravagant displays of fore- and after-play. Truth be known, he rather enjoyed it. He suspected Alucard/Integra did too.

This time, however, Walter did not touch her breasts or her mouth or the folds between her legs. He pushed her off him and onto the bed. He rolled on top of her and buried his face in her shoulder and cried like a baby.

  
 _Fantasy Number Seven: There’s an image in his head that no rolling around with vampires can erase. It’s of himself and Integra, making love. Sometimes they’re in her bed, or his, or in a field of grass and flowers or even a field of war. The positions change, too. One thing that never changes: his hair, thick and soft and black, his face smooth and flawless. Walter and Integra make love and she is young and beautiful and so is he._

  
Brushing Integra's hair had become a twice-daily chore for Walter. In the privacy of his mind he likened it to being gently eaten alive by beautiful moths and out of some perverse masochistic streak he would talk as he combed, drawing out and prolonging the exercise.

"Ferguson says that there's a problem sourcing the Black Talon bullets you wanted."

"The rumours of a cult in Darby seem to be just rumours, I'm certain of it, just silly children playing role play games. Still, we should investigate just to be absolutely sure."

"I'm afraid your favourite cravat has gone missing again. I'll look for it when I have time tomorrow and where I find that Alucard has taken it I'll make him give it back."

Of a morning her eyes were bright with pain; of an evening they were glazed with the effect of exhaustion and strong painkillers and even stronger antibiotics. Every now and again those eyes would drift shut but she'd always rouse herself when he said her name.

One evening he did not say her name. One evening Walter let his hands fall to his sides and he looked at her weary face in the dressing table mirror, remembering what Alucard had said: _"You do know that she's not pure, don't you?"_

He wondered if it had hurt. He wondered if she'd liked it.

The hairbrush clicked as he set it on the dressing table. Integra had been taught to fire a gun almost as soon as she started walking and was possessed of a piercing scream that could make every solider in a kilometre radius come running. While it was possible that there had been a rape it seemed doubtful. Whatever the morality of it all, whatever the ultimate motivations of the soldiers, Integra had said consented. She had said yes.

Integra's head nodded and a soft snore drifted from her mouth. Leaning close he whispered in her ear, "I forgive you," knowing full well that it wasn't his place to forgive anything. He slipped one arm under her knees and one arm under her shoulder blades and lifted her up. She woke with a snort and instinctively set one hand against his chest to brace herself. He waited, but she didn't protest and he carried her to bed. Setting her down to take off her soft, ugly dressing gown revealed soft, ugly pyjamas and she leaned against him as he drew back the covers, submitted sleepily as he put her to bed. He knelt beside her.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I failed to protect you." Walter was sorry for a lot of other things as well but he sure as hell wasn't going to say them out loud. Blinking muzzily, Integra reached out and cupped his cheek, stroking softly with her thumb. He froze, stopped breathing. The touch lasted for a second and an eternity before her eyes closed and her hand dropped. He caught it in his own. Tears pricked beneath his eyelids and he stood up and walked to the door.

Halfway there he stopped, wondering if she'd remember being carried to bed the next the next day. Flicking a stack of half-empty painkiller packets with his forefinger, he guessed that it was unlikely.

  
 _Fantasy Number Eight: Walter lies on the bed and watches as Integra paints her face._

 _Arrayed before her is a box of opulently coloured eye shadows, a bundle of pencils and lipsticks and compacts and little bottles._

 _Shaking a bottle thoroughly before opening it, she pours creamy foundation onto her palm. She dabs it on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose and her chin before spreading it with her fingertips and putting little smears under her jaw. She wipes her hand with tissues before taking a brush and drawing it through shimmering powder. First the foundation, then the blush. She outlines her eyes in rich ochre and paints her lips carmine._

 _Walter has known men who, although having been married for decades, have never seen their wives without makeup. Each morning these women get up at unholy hours to paint their faces and set their hair. They make love in the dark or else won’t permit their husbands to touch their face._

 _It is a matter of supreme indifference to him if Integra wears makeup or not. She almost never does. The significance of all this rests on intimacy, the difference between the face presented to the world and the face worn while sleeping. Watching Integra put makeup on seems to him to be as intimate as watching her dress, undress, bathe or even sit on a toilet. Imagining the strokes of a brush or the lines of a pencil is a dream of trust._

She was getting worse.

Walter could smell the sickness in her, on her skin, on her breath; see it in the yellowing whites of her eyes. Integra had been a fighter since the day she’d been born. She’d fought everything possible and when she ran out of things to fight she went out and looked for new ones. She fought the raging _staphylococcus aureus_ in her bloodstream and for the first time in her life she was losing.

He was with her when she collapsed. She made no sound and Walter caught her easily as she fell. She called for her father and lapsed into unconsciousness while Walter carried her out of the office.

He decided to knock off early for the day. Pushing through the swarms of doctors and nurses and useless hanger-ons, he went back to Integra’s office and took a pile of reports, all of which he was authorised to sign for in situations like this, and on a whim he also liberated a cigarillo from the box that had gone untouched since the day of Laura’s attack. Back in his room he stripped off his vest and gloves, set his pager to emergency messages only, kicked off his shoes and plonked himself down on his bed to enjoy his first smoke in forty years.

“I thought you quit,” said Alucard, slinking morosely through the wall.

“So I did,” replied Walter, making a notation in a long list of equipment requests. He went on reading as Alucard wandered about the room, picking objects up and examining them as if he’d never seem them before. “Doctor Trevallyn is going to open her neck up again. They’re shaving her from neck to knee as we speak.”

“She’ll be bitching about ingrown hairs for weeks.” He crawled up onto the foot of the bed and crouched there like a particularly colourful gargoyle. “Wanna fuck?” he asked.

“Alucard. I don’t think that’s appropriate right now, do you?”

“Walter. Since when has it been appropriate at all?”

The Hellsing family retainer ignored him completely. The next few hours passed in amiable silence, with Walter reading his papers and Alucard watching with brooding intensity. Finally, there was a knock on the door.

“Enter.”

It was Doctor Trevallyn, looking unusually depressed. He did a double take when he saw Alucard, and then recovered admirably. “Have you been smoking?” he asked suspiciously, sniffing the air.

“Yes, I have. And I hope for your sake that you are the bearer of good news.”

Trevallyn shut the door behind him and offered Walter a small plastic baggie that was at first glance empty. Holding it up to the light, Walter was just able to make out a tiny speck of ivory.

“I’ve just dug that out of Sir Hellsing’s neck.”

“What is it?”

“A chip of tooth. A chip of vampire tooth, to be exact.”

“And that’s what’s been causing the infection?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Fancy that,” murmured Walter, passing the baggie to Alucard. The vampire gave it no more than a curiously glance before tossing it back to the doctor. “You know, this is the first time I’ve come across a chip from a vampire’s tooth. Usually the teeth are the most resilient part of the entire creature.”

“This is the first time I’ve found one, too,” said Trevallyn, “and I’ve been dissecting ghouls for years. “

Alucard rumbled, “Carmila was physically weak. She had always been physically weak. Her power was mainly focused in bewitchment and hypnotism, that’s why she was able to convince everyone in the mansion that she was Integra’s sister Laura. Except Police Girl,” he added, with an uncharacteristic note of pride in his voice.

“You knew her?” asked Walter curiously.

“Of her. We’d never met.”

Walter shrugged and turned his attention to Trevallyn. “I take it that Integra will recover fully?”

“Well, now that the source of the infection is gone, hopefully she’ll start responding to the antibiotics. You seem to be handling this all quite well, I have to say. You’ve always struck me as being very fond of her.”

“Heh,” said Walter, with an utterly disarming grin. He flicked his fingers. Silver flashed and Alucard’s head flew up into the air to hit the wall with a thud.

 _“Virgin Mary on a bicycle!_ ” screeched Trevallyn, stumbling backwards into the door. He fumbled for the doorknob and opened it, falling through the doorway. The door slammed shut behind him as Alucard’s decapitated body toppled off the edge of the bed and landed in an unceremonious heap on the floor.

“Now see what you’ve done,” tuttered Walter, making futile wipes at his trousers. “You’ve gotten blood all over me.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” pouted Alucard’s head.

Walter went and had a shower.

  
 _Fantasy Number Nine: He knows that it’s breaking tradition, he knows that it’s bad luck, but he simply cannot wait. It’s a simple task to slip away from the crowd and make his way to the back of the building. The climb up the drainpipe is easy; it’s only a couple of stories high. On the way up he pauses by a window to check his reflection in the glass, smoothing down his raven hair, straightening the tiny red rose in his buttonhole. He smiles smugly at his own youthful and handsome face._

 _Integra is busy reading reports and she jumps as he climbs over the edge of the balcony, puts her papers down and strides towards him in a swish of satin skirts._

 _“What are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to see me before the wedding!”_

 _Walter brushes dust and ivy leaves from his jacket. “But I’ve already seen you. I’ve seen you every day for years.”_

 _“That’s completely different and you know it,” her eyes narrow in a scowl. “Don’t touch me. You’ll muss me,” she says, dancing backwards. “Well, you’re here now. You might as well tell me what you think.”_

 _The wedding dress is cream rather than white, a concession to her coffee-cream skin. It falls in long and elegant lines, with only a delicate beadwork bodice to prevent it from being so plain it was severe. Her hair is styled in an intricate mass of curls and her makeup is almost as elaborate._

 _“You’re beautiful,” and again she eludes his embrace._

 _“You’ll smear my lipstick. You’ll smudge my eyeliner,” she says when he tries to kiss her. Finally he drops to his knees and presses his face to her satin-clad belly. This she permits, stroking his hair as he nuzzles at the smooth fabric._

 _“This is the happiest day of my life,” he says quietly._

 _“Mine too,” she whispers. “Mine too.”_

  
The beep of the heart machine was constant and soothing. Walter simply sat by the bed, holding Integra’s hand, nothing else. He looked up at the sound of a shy scuff in the doorway. Seras Victoria stood there, biting her lip nervously, and he couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed.

“You might as well come in.”

“Is she…?”

“She’s comfortable, said Walter, guessing at the question as Victoria trailed off. “Completely unconscious, in fact. If she got any more comfortable she’d be in a coma.”

“That’s good, I suppose,” said Victoria, staring at the floor. “I was kind of wondering something. How- how long have you worked here, Walter?”

“Virtually all of my life. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious. So you’ve known Sir Integra for a long time, then?”

“Oh yes.”

“I thought so. You must care about her a lot.”

The old man was silent for a long time before he replied.

“I love her more than I have ever loved anyone or anything in the entire world. If she asked for my hands I would cut them off and carry them to her on a silver platter held between my teeth. I’d make a mountain of corpses out of her enemies. I’d swim through lakes of acid and fire. Any order she gave me, no matter how difficult, no matter how annoyingly petty, could ever be too much. Whatever she commands, I will do.”

Walter swallowed, feeling shameful tears prick behind his eyes. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? She’s my commander. She is perfect and beautiful on her pedestal and what makes her so perfect and beautiful is that she’s completely unattainable. She’s beautiful because she is so strong and so proud. Her independence and pride are her power. If she were to soften, if her pride was ever to soften enough to allow her to say, “I love you,” or, “I need you,” she’d be no longer powerful. She’d be no longer beautiful. She’d be no longer the powerful, beautiful Integra. She’d become just another woman whose hair smells like cigar smoke.

“The very things that I love in her are the things that will never allow her to love me.” Tenderly he cupped her palm against his cheek. He added quietly, “She has the bluest eyes of anyone I have ever met.

“Miss Victoria, please. Please leave me alone with her,” and the young vampire had the grace to go without a sound.

  
 _Fantasy Number Ten: Again the settings change according to his mood. Sometimes the two of them are naked and curled loving around each other, sometimes they are in a field of war and she is a terrible goddess covered in the flesh and blood of her enemies. Sometimes she is crying. Sometimes she is smiling. Sometimes she simply says the four words that he wants so desperately to hear:_

 _“Walter, I love you.”_

  
It was so late it was early when Walter was finally kicked out of the infirmary. In his room Alucard/Integra was sitting on the bed, waiting for him. The old man walked to the window and drew back the curtains to a sky that was the violent purple just dawn.

“Has anyone ever told you, Alucard, that you are suspiciously good at being a woman?”

Soft snickering came from behind him. “Would you like to know how I learned?”

“By all the angels in Heaven I swear I do not,” said Walter firmly.

“Suit yourself,” said Alucard/Integra. “Come to bed? There’s still a while to go before the sun rises.”

“No.”

Silence. Then, pettishly, “why not?”

Walter sighed and rested his forehead against the glass. “Alucard, why did you come up with this whole scheme? It can’t be just the blood. It’s too elaborate for that.” A chilly hand slipped across the back of his neck and an even chillier mouth pressed against his cheek.

“Integra’s been too sick to play. I was bored, and it was fun watching you wrestle with your conscious. Humans can be so prudish.” A pause. “The sex was pretty good too.”

“That’s it? Surely it’s not so simple.”

“I’ll admit I felt sorry for you,” she took his chin between thumb and forefinger and turned his face to hers. They kissed, and when they drew apart Walter felt a sting in his lower lip. “Integra could fuck you six ways ‘till Sunday and she’d still be mine only. She could have a congo-line of lovers going down the hallway and out the front door and she would still belong only to me.”

“Such a compassionate monster.” She drew another kiss from him, sucking at his lip.

“When it suits me,” she said. “Are you sure that you don’t want to lie with me again?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“You’re a liar, Angel of Death. You’re not sorry at all.”

“You’re absolutely right,” said Walter. “I am a liar. I’m not sorry at all,” and he smiled with the blood trickling down his chin.

Alucard/Integra stepped back. She slipped the satin nightdress up and over her head and tossed it across the mattress. Naked, she regarded him. Naked, she sank into a pool of shadow and disappeared

“Goodbye,” said Walter to the empty air. He picked the nightdress up. The box it belonged to was still in his sock drawer, and he folded the red material in such a way as to leave a minium of creases before placing it in the box and putting the lid back on.

Then he lay down and slept, so that he would be ready for Integra when she needed him.

END


End file.
